The Great Outdoors - On My Doorstep

By Glenys O'Connell

Some people might think it's tame, but it's been a long road to find my own Great Outdoors - and now I live surrounded by it.  I grew up country, and something in my heart always knew I'd return to my roots - even though Ontario is 3000 miles from my British hometown.

Right outside my door, there's a wealth of wildlife living in swampland - usually small and friendly, but there are moose, bear, deer, raccons, fishers, coyotes.... Fortunately, they're pretty shy, so mostly on my walks I make do with the pretty buttertflies, snakes, turtles, wild turkeys and other birds.


My Great Outdoors has its own secret places, perfect for a writer.

And there's always a welcoming friend on the doorstep







And a pretty spot to relax with a friend after a gruelling chapter.....

 So, while my great outdoors be very tame by comparison to the vast wildernesses my fellow Roses enjoy, it's plenty wild enough for me these days. After all, even a wondering writer has to settle down sometime, right?

Glenys O'Connell has been lured out of her retreat to celebrate the release of her new book, Naked Writing:The No Frills Way to Write Your Book, (see here on Amazon.com or here on Amazon.uk)  which is the result of nine years teaching creative writing. The ebook version is a bestseller in in the Kindle Top 100 Books on Writing.

A Peek In My Backyard by Claire Ashgrove

Being outdoors month and all... combined with this crazy RomCon preparation that has chewed away at my creative mind and eaten all my time... I thought I'd stick with super simple and give you a peek at my backyard. 

Many of you know I live on a farm.  When I first bought the property I spent that first evening on a picnic in the grass, looking up at the brightest stars I've ever seen.  At night, the crickets sing like they are in concert.  In the distant, (and sometimes not so distant) tree lines coyotes howl, yip, and play with one another.  The first time I heard young pups playing was an eye-opener.  I've never heard such racket.  Once the sun goes down, we don't get much road traffic, but we can hear the train a good 7 miles away.  Not just the whistle, but the chug-chug of wheels on the track as well.  Occasionally the Air Force Base sends an A-10 or a B-2 on a mission or there's something flying in.  And in between all this, we hear the horses in the pasture.  Nickering now and then, an occasional whinny, and just the quiet hooves walking from one place to another.

The other day I went looking for a screw and encountered this guy:

Okay, maybe not that precise one, but that's a great representation.  He was curled up in a plastic tub, not the least bit bothered by us.  We left him be, and I assume, since I haven't seen any baby pigeons this year, he's still in residence.

Speaking of pigeons -- last spring we found a fledgling on the ground in the same barn.  She now resides in the house.  We hand-fed her, and at night she coos to us.  Very soothing melody.

Right now, we're fascinated by our newest old edition, Baariq.  He's been in a boarding facility for about three years, and we just brought him back home.  This photograph is pretty old; he's grown up a lot since this, filled out into adult form, and follows us around.  He lives in our front yard, because the gentleman beneath him, runs the pasture. (Khemo is a yearling in this photo)



Baariq



Khemokaizee

And then, every now and then, we stroll to the far corner where those who've been with us and left us now rest.  It may sound morbid, but really no... it's nice to go back and walk through memories and know our old friends are still nearby.  And that's what makes a house ahome, I think.  The little tidbits of us we leave behind.  Then we can turn around and see their legacy, and everything's a happy place.

Isabella

Isabella's daughter

We love our piece of the outdoors.  My boys pick flowers as often as they can for Mom (of their own accord!), bring me grasshoppers regularly, caterpillars, beetles, and great big honking clods of mud.  The dogs leave me presents in the yard that, quite often, I don't want to know what they were.  But those little gifts draw visitors like the big old buzzard who perched one morning on the kids' picnic table.  The hawks talk to us, two days ago we saw a golden eagle.  And all around you can hear the echoing chorus of mooo-mooo.   Calves in springtime are such an adorable thing!

On that note, I'm heading out the door and shipping off to RomCon 2012!  Hope I will see some of you there!

Claire

http://www.claireashgrove.com/



Sometimes the big outdoors and I don't mix.

I love the outdoors. It doesn't always love me. As a fair-skinned redhead, I've had a few patches of skin cancer removed. Now I use nothing less than 50-SPF lotion everytime I go outside. Just as my doctor instructed, I wear a broad rimmed hat, most of the time. Now it looks as if I'll have to add bug spray to the preparations before stepping outdoors.

I have a large patch of bleeding hearts along the side of our house. They're one of the many flowers I love. Roses, lily-of-the-valley, lilacs and bleeding hearts are tops on my list. Evidently as I was weeding them, I was bitten by a spider. I never felt the little bugger--at least until I tried to sleep last night. My arm was swollen, hot to the touch and throbbed. I paced the floor with an ice pack on it.

Today, the doctor said, "Spider bite." Use bug spray when you go outside. I almost laughed at the visual of me getting prepared to leave the house. First I'll slather on sun lotion, spritz bug spray over exposed parts of my body and then donn the hat.

Remember getting ready to go outside and play in the snow? All the layers of clothes our moms made us wear? We could barely move.  I hated the preparations then and I hate them now. Sometimes the great outdoors and I don't mix.

Celebrating the Outdoors With Farming by Brenda Whiteside

Farming is not for the faint of heart or weak of limb. Although, my son, Lance is the lead in the vegetable garden and does ninety percent of the work, the other ten percent leaves me exhausted at times. My main pursuit is to eliminate the weeds. If you are at all familiar with fertile prairie, you're laughing at me. The big problem is we let them get ahead of us. But then I think they multiply while we sleep. We're going organic so manual labor is the about the only way to take care of the monsters. And if I don't get out of the vegetable garden soon and into the blackberry garden, we won't be able to see the blackberries to pick them! This is the weak of limb part.

Blankets protect our babies

Pepper plants in the foreground

The weeds came back with the blackberries

Weeding the blackberries in March

The faint of heart part comes in when our little babies die or get eaten alive by bugs. Like I mentioned in prior blogs, the weather took out tomato plants and rendered our peach and apricots fruitless, the bugs destroyed some leafy greens. We got a scare with the potatoes - again the weather. The night that happened, we realized that whatever the reported low will be for Paulden will actually be about seven degrees colder here. The tops of the potatoes were black. I took little manicure scissors and cut off all the black areas. We then mulched and covered all the plants with the blankets. They seem to be responding.

Frank has worked hard on the lawn

The blankets are the best thing ever! If only we'd known about them earlier. Lance visited a large successful farm in Chino Valley. His friend is the owner's daughter and she encouraged him to 'just go talk to my dad'. He didn't want to intrude but the man was extremely gracious and helpful. So now we cover our babies in blankets which keep out the nasty bugs that devastated our leafy greens. They also help to keep the moisture in and keep down the weeds. We were able to actually save some broccoli and chard that we thought the bugs had destroyed.

Last night we had asparagus, and in our salad we had radishes. Next week we won't need to buy any salad greens or spinach. Our garden is beginning to feed us! Now, if we could only eat the weeds.

Great Outdoors Month by Jena Galifany

June has been designated Great Outdoors Month. It is the time to get out in the open as much as possible and enjoy the world around you. I live in the high desert so being outside in the daytime can be hazardous to my health. Temperatures can reach from high nineties to the low hundreds. It is better to get the outdoor time in after the sun goes down.

Doug and Steve @ Knotts 2011

What can be done after the sun goes down that’s fun for the kids? Did you ever play hide and seek? It’s a simple childhood game where one person is “It”. That person would cover their eyes and count to twenty while the others all hide. Then the It person has to find them. If they are found but can make it to the counting spot, aka “home” before It tags them, they are free. If It is looking for someone else, the others can try to run for “home” and be free. Simple, right?

Now, our version of the game is this: Everyone wears black clothing that they don’t care if they get wet in and a sturdy pair of old sneakers. Each player is armed with a super-soaker and a squirt gun. Have a centrally located plastic kitchen sized garbage can filled with water. Floating in that water is a large stockpile of water balloons ready for use. If an attack is going on a balloon can be scooped from the container as you run by. These are ammo for every one to use.

The game is now played along these lines. No lights should be on in the yard so hiding can be creative. Be sure that there is nothing that can be a hazard in the dark yard. You don’t want anyone to fall during the game. Everyone hides. I’ve hidden by lying down in the shadow of a fence. I suggest checking for ants before trying this. My husband has spent time sniping from up in a tree. My youngest took a pail of water balloons up into her tree house and clobbered anyone who tried to sneak by below her. She was only five when she did this.

Now, everyone is It and everyone is fair game. The players may take up a hiding place to snipe from or if they are more adventurous, they can go out hunting the others. It’s all good fun and cooling in the summer heat. I have two and a half acres so our games got to be rather large.

 For her sixteenth birthday, my older daughter wanted a game of water wars, our name for the game. She wanted to have a couple of her friends on her team and she wanted to “hunt” boys. My son, my nephew, and my husband were the branded targets for the night. The girls had a blast keeping the guys on the run.

One should note that after the game has ended, be sure to let all the targets know. After the girls had their fill of hunting, they came in to watch a movie and eat popcorn. After a while, I noticed that my husband was missing. I went out to the yard and found him. He’d been sitting up in a tree, getting eaten by bugs, waiting for the girls to sneak by. No one told him that they were coming in for the night. Now, there’s dedication to fun in the out doors!

Jen in meditation @ Knotts 2011

All of this fun can take place once the sun goes down, after a barbeque or a day spent back-packing or taking a nature walk at a local park. The important thing is to get outside and enjoy the health benefits of fresh air and exercise.

What are your favorite out door games? Did you ever have a Badminton set or a croquet set out in your yard? We did when I was a kid. We also had a large tent set up in the back yard all the time. I spend a lot of time in that tent. My siblings and I were always out side and we had a great time. How about you?

Cheers!

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Jena Galifany writes in the genre of sweet romance and adventure. She can be found at her WEBSITE, or on Facebook.